


Until The End Of All Things

by AriesOnMars



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Child Loss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Language Barrier, Miscarriage, Pregnancy - holding someone while they miscarry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-08 08:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18891217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesOnMars/pseuds/AriesOnMars
Summary: There is no light in the underworld, and without light nothing can grow. This is a fact Persephone must endure time and time again.





	Until The End Of All Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



There is no light in the underworld. Inside the depths of the world nothing grows, at least nothing living. Between brilliant veins of silver and gold that wind this way and that the phantoms of trees and bushes bear cursed fruit. Insubstantial and incorporeal that bounty offers only to bind it’s denizens to the earth, each mouthful making what grows in the overworld too rich, too heavy, too unwanted as it sits in the stomach. The only things in the darkness with a tangible purpose are iron ore and deeper, richer, more dangerous things that humans will one day find and make use of.

Persephone touches over the swell of her belly, just now starting to show under layers of intricately embroidered fabric. She has carried inside of herself, for just a short time, a shred of life. This precious life, so commonplace in the overworld, so taken for granted, is so much more rare down in the depths. No, it is more than rare.

It is impossible.

She feels her husband on the edge of her mind. He is an older being, his presence so much more pronounced, so much more intimidating. He speaks in a tongue that she almost knows, some words she had heard her father use before, the accent of some inflections matches Zeus’ speech, but he never speaks like Hades. When her husband speaks it is in the Titantongue, for like the land he rules he _remembers_. He remembers pain and suffering and wars, and worse than remembering all that has ever harmed him or his brothers he is doomed to never forget. He cannot forget, though it may fade from memory for all others he will cultivate those memories just like the bones of the fallen, all neatly in order and every death marked. He has tried to learn to speak more than that for her, and some words come easier to him that others. He has visited the Elysian fields at times, and simply listened to the humans speak, although the tongue is foreign to him and Persephone suspects it is painful for him to speak it he will still find a new word to say when she returns to this home among the monsters.

“ _Beloved_ …”

The word shudders through her body, even in the mortal tongue Hades is death and she presses a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry that deep tone wants to pull out from her.

“I am well,” she finally gasps. She doesn’t know if Hades is aware she has lied, if only because she isn’t sure how many words they share now.

She is not well and neither is he. They have both been worried and fretting in their own ways. She has been pining all the worse for the overworld, for her mother’s embrace and guidance, for the sunlight and abundance of food and hope. He has been avoiding her, hesitant to even come close to her, and he has sent for handmaidens to tend to her every need while he watches from afar. They fear for the same thing, and it is coming.

Oh, cruel nature! What horrors must await a husband and wife who are doomed by their own designs? Could not one year go by where the seed does not plant? Where an intimate embrace leads to nothing more than a fondness for the pair? For there is fondness, and tenderness, and fear when they come together, because the seed always plants.

But there is no light in the underworld, and nothing living grows so deep underground.

Hubris and hope leads them to this path time and again. Some years are easier than others. The seed plants, but not for long, and the pain is not so great as it could be.

This year is not kind. She had begun to think, perhaps, if she could bring this child to the surface then they would not meet the same fate. The child could grow strong and brave and come with her into the darkness every year.

Pain twists in her belly and she tries so hard not to sob. Perhaps it isn’t the darkness and it is instead her. If she can be strong she can hold back what has come time and time again.

Her legs feel weak and something trickles down the inside of her thigh.

“I am well,” Persephone whispers into the darkness.

If she says it aloud perhaps it will become true.

“I am well.”

What is pain? She has felt it before, she has felt misery and hunger and fear. Pain is nothing. This is nothing. And, if it is nothing, then nothing will become of it.

“I am well!”

She feels the cold before she feels his touch. She looks up at him and her body shudders. He is not scared, and he is not worried. He is only sad, because there is nothing to do now but offer her what comfort he can. It is the touch that makes her finally sob aloud, it is the closeness of her husband after months of distancing her from his touch that breaks her. She has known his worry, she has known that he has blamed himself for what is to come just as much as she has wondered if she was at fault. She has known the thought behind his longing glances, that perhaps, this time, if he does not touch her he will not taint her and the child within with death.

Persephone falls into her husband and lets the underworld know her pain. She screams and the caverns shudder. She sobs and it echoes all the way to the entrance of her husband’s kingdom, scattering away the harpies and beasts that crowd around it. She is misery and sorrow and anger, and when she strikes her husband he doesn’t stop her.

The mortals that have come to live under Hades’ rule will hide and cover their ears until the silence comes, but when the silence comes they weep. For their Queen, who has suffered so dearly and so often, in such a way no mortal or immortal ever should. For their King who tends to his wife with all the tenderness he can manage, but who never seems to have enough to give.

As before Hades will take her away from mournful eyes and send away her handmaidens. He will tend to Persephone himself as though by serving her he can atone for what has come to pass. But that will be after she had time to wail and rest, and until then he has another to tend to.

He will bury this child among the others. Nestled between Diamonds and Emeralds, Rubies and Sapphires, Topaz and Crystals and Opals this child will sleep without ever having awoken.

And so will the next.

And the next.

And the next.

Until the end of all things.


End file.
